Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-4ws75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-08T05:27:00.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pirahã exceptionality: A reassessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Andrew Nevins ,
David Pesetsky  and
Cilene Rodrigues
Andrew Nevins*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
David Pesetsky*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cilene Rodrigues*
Affiliation:
University of Brasilia and Emmanuel College
*
Nevins, Department of Linguistics, Harvard University, Boylston Hall, Third Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138 [nevins@fas.harvard.edu]
Pesetsky, Department of Linguistics & Philosophy, 32-D862, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139 [pesetsk@mit.edu]
Rodrigues, University of Brasilia, Department of Foreign Languages, L-105F, Emmanuel College, 400 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115 [cilene@unb.br]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Everett (2005) has claimed that the grammar of Pirahã is exceptional in displaying ‘inexplicable gaps’, that these gaps follow from a cultural principle restricting communication to ‘immediate experience’, and that this principle has ‘severe’ consequences for work on universal grammar. We argue against each of these claims. Relying on the available documentation and descriptions of the language, especially the rich material in Everett 1986, 1987b, we argue that many of the exceptional grammatical ‘gaps’ supposedly characteristic of Pirahã are misanalyzed by Everett (2005) and are neither gaps nor exceptional among the world's languages. We find no evidence, for example, that Pirahã lacks embedded clauses, and in fact find strong syntactic and semantic evidence in favor of their existence in Pirahã. Likewise, we find no evidence that Pirahã lacks quantifiers, as claimed by Everett (2005). Furthermore, most of the actual properties of the Pirahã constructions discussed by Everett (for example, the ban on prenominai possessor recursion and the behavior of WH-constructions) are familiar from languages whose speakers lack the cultural restrictions attributed to the Pirahã. Finally, following mostly Gonçalves (1993, 2000, 2001), we also question some of the empirical claims about Pirahã culture advanced by Everett in primary support of the ‘immediate experience’ restriction. We conclude that there is no evidence from Pirahã for the particular causal relation between culture and grammatical structure suggested by Everett.

Keywords

PirahãembeddingrecursionpossessorWH-movementcorrelativesnumeralsmythcultureuniversalscosmologyparameters

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 355 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

Collective email, piraha-paper@mit.edu

References

Abbott, Miriam. 1991. Macushi. Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 3, ed. by Derbyshire, Desmond C. and Pullum, Geoffrey K., 23–160. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Adam, Lucien, and Henry, Victor. 1880. Arte y vocabulario de la lengua chiquita: Con algunos textos traducidos y explicados. Compuestos sobre manuscritos inéditos del XVIII0siglo. (Bibliothèque linguistique américaine.) Paris: Maisonneuve.Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y., and Dixon, R. M. W.. 1999. Other small families and isolates. The Amazonian languages, ed. by Dixon, R. M. W. and Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y., 341–83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Stephen R., and Lightfoot, David. 2002. The language organ: Linguistics as cognitive physiology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arregi-Urbina, Karlos. 2002. Focus on Basque movements. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark C. 2001. The atoms of language. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Barner, David, and Bachrach, Asaf. 2008. To know exactly one, children acquire at least two. Cambridge, MA: MIT, and San Diego: University of California, San Diego, ms.Google Scholar
Bayer, Josef. 1996. Directionality and logical form: On the scope of focusing particles and wh-in-situ. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beier, Christine, Michael, Lev; and Sherzer, Joel. 2002. Discourse forms and processes in indigenous lowland South America: An areal-typological perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology 31. 121–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhatt, Rajesh. 2003. Locality in correlatives. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21. 485–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickel, Balthasar. 2000. Grammar and social practice: The role of ‘culture’ in linguistic relativity. Evidence for linguistic relativity, ed. by Niemeier, Susanne and Dirven, René, 161–91. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Burton, Strang C. 1996. Past tense on nouns as death, destruction, and loss. North Eastern Linguistic Society 27. 65–78.Google Scholar
Cable, Seth. 2010. The syntax of the Tibetan correlative. Correlatives, ed. by Aniko Liptak. Amsterdam: Elsevier, to appear. Online: http://people.umass.edu/scable/papers/Tibetan-Correlative-Syntax.pdf.Google Scholar
Cahill, Michael. 2004. From endangered to less endangered: Case histories from Brazil and Papua New Guinea. SIL Electronic Working Papers 2004.004.Google Scholar
Cattell, Ray. 1978. On the source of interrogative adverbs. Language 54. 61–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1956. Three models for the description of language. IRE Transactions on Information Theory 2. 113–24.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1975. The logical structure of linguistic theory. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. (Current studies in linguistics.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Colapinto, John. 2007. The interpreter: The puzzling language of an Amazon tribe. New Yorker, April 16,2007.118–37. Online: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto.Google Scholar
Corbett, Greville G. 2000. Number. (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culicover, Peter W. 2004. Review of The Cambridge grammar of the English language, by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Language 80. 127–41.Google Scholar
de Oliveira, Adelia Engrace. 1977. A teminologia de parentesco Mura-Pirahã. (Boletim do MPEG, serie antropologia 66.) Belém: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi.Google Scholar
de Oliveira, Adelia Engrace, and Rodrigues, Ivelise. 1977. Alguns aspects da ergologia Mura-Pirahã. (Boletim do MPEG, serie antropologia 65.) Belém: Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi.Google Scholar
Demirdache, Hamida. 1996. The chief of the United States: Sentences in St'at'imcets (Lillooet Salish): A cross-linguistic asymmetry in the temporal interpretation of noun phrases and its implications. Papers for the 31st International Conference on Salish and Neighbouring Languages, 101–18. Vancouver: University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
den Besten, Hans. 1996. Associative DPs. Linguistics in the Netherlands 1996, ed. by Cremers, Crit and Dikken, Marcel den, 13–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Derbyshire, Desmond C. 1987. Morphosyntactic areal characteristics of Amazonian languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 53. 311–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, Robert M. W. 2002. Australian languages: Their nature and development. (Cambridge language surveys.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dixon, Robert M. W., with Vogel, Alan R.. 2004. The Jarawara language of southern Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew Synge. 1980. The positional tendencies of sentential noun phrases in universal grammar. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 25. 123–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunn, Michael. 2000. Chukchi women's language: A historical-comparative perspective. Anthropological Linguistics 42. 305–28.Google Scholar
Enfield, N. J. 2002. Ethnosyntax: Explorations in grammar and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Epps, Patience. 2008. Growing a numeral system: The historical development of numerals in an Amazonian language family. Diachronica 23. 259–88.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas. 2003. Context, culture, and structuration in the languages of Australia. Annual Review of Anthropology 32. 13–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everett, Caleb. 2006. Patterns in Kantiana: Articulation, perception, and grammar. Houston, TX: Rice University dissertation. Online: http://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/handle/1911/20600/3256687.PDF.Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 1986. Pirahã. Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 1, ed. by Derbyshire, Desmond C. and Pullum, Geoffrey K., 200–326. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google ScholarPubMed
Everett, Daniel L. 1987a. Pirahã clitic doubling. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5. 245–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 1987b. A língua Pirahã e a teoria da sintaxe: Descrição, perspectivas e teoria. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp.Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 1998a. Pirahã: A Native American language of Northwest Brazil. Internet site: http://web.archive.org/web/20001121191700/amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/. Accessed February 18, 2007 (no longer accessible, April 14, 2007).Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 1998b. Pirahã dictionary. Internet site: http://web.archive.org/web/20001109203800/amazonling.linguist.pitt.edu/dictionary.html. Accessed February 18, 2007 (no longer accessible, April 14, 2007).Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 2005. Cultural constraints on grammar and cognition in Pirahã: Another look at the design features of human language. Current Anthropology 46. 621–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 2006. Reply to Bambini, Gentili and Pietiini. Current Anthropology 47. 144–45.Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 2007a. Cultural constraints on grammar in Pirahã: A reply to Nevins, Pesetsky, and Rodrigues (2007). Online: http://ling.auf.net/lingBuzz/000427.Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. 2007b. Recursion and human thought: Why the Pirahã don't have numbers. Edge: The third culture 213. (June 14, 2007.).Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1963. The position of embedding transformations in a grammar. Word 19. 208–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foley, William A. 1986. The Papuan languages of New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Frank, Michael C., Everett, Daniel L., Fedorenko, Evelina; and Gibson, Edward. 2008. Number as a cognitive technology: Evidence from Pirahã language and cognition. Cognition 108. 819–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
George, Leland M., and Kornfilt, Jaklin. 1981. Finiteness and boundedness in Turkish. Binding and filtering, ed. by Heny, Frank W., 105–27. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gonçalves, Marco Antônio. 1993. O significado do nome: Cosmologia e nominação entre os Pirahã. Rio de Janeiro: Sette Letras.Google Scholar
Gonçalves, Marco Antônio. 2000. Pirahã: Indigenous peoples in Brazil: ISA. Internet site: http://pib.socioambiental.org/en/povo/piraha. Accessed February 9, 2007.Google Scholar
Gonçalves, Marco Antônio. 2001. O mundo inacabado: Ação e criação em uma cosmologia amazônica: Etnografia Pirahã. Rio de Janeiro: Editora da UFRJ.Google Scholar
Gonçalves, Marco Antônio. 2005. Commentary on Everett (2005). Current Anthropology 24.636.Google Scholar
Gordon, Peter. 2004. Numerical cognition without words: Evidence from Amazonia. Science 306. 496–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Green, Diana. 1997. Diferenças entre termos numérico s em algumas línguas indígenas do Brasil (Boletim do MPEG, serie antropologia 13.2.) Belém: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. Some universais of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. Universals of language, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph, 73–113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1978. Generalizations about numeral systems. Universals of human language, vol. 3: Word structure, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H., 249–95. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Grimshaw, Jane. 1979. Complement selection and the lexicon. Linguistic Inquiry 10. 279–326.Google Scholar
Grondona, Verónica M. 1998. A grammar of Mocovi. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh dissertation.Google Scholar
Gualdieri, C. B. 1998. Mocoví (Guaycurú): Fonologia e morfossintaxe. Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinas dissertation.Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth L. 1966. Kinship reflections in syntax: Some Australian examples. Word 22. 318–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hale, Kenneth L. 1975. Gaps in grammar and culture. Linguistics and anthropology: In honor of C. F. Voegelin, ed. by Kinkade, M. Dale, Hale, Kenneth L., and Werner, Oswald, 295–315. Lisse: Peter de Ridder.Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth L. 1976. The adjoined relative clause in Australia. Grammatical categories in Australian languages, ed. by Dixon, R. M. W., 78–105. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar
Hammarström, Harald. 2006. Rarities in numeral sysems. Paper presented at Rara & Rarissima: Collecting and interpreting unusual characteristics of human languages, Leipzig, Germany. Online: http://www.cs.chalmers.se/%7Eharald2/rarapaper.pdf.Google Scholar
Hammarström, Harald. 2008. Small numeral systems and the hunter-gatherer connection. Paper presented at Language, Communication, and Cognition, Brighton, UK.Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi, and Ritter, Elizabeth. 2002. Person and number in pronouns: A featuregeometric analysis. Language 78. 482–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hauser, Marc D., Chomsky, Noam; and Fitch, W. Tecumseh. 2002. The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298. 1569–79.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hawkins, John A. 1990. A parsing theory of word order universals. Linguistic Inquiry 21. 223–62.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. 1994. A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Robert E. 1998. Wai wai. Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 4, ed. by Derbyshire, Desmond C. and Pullum, Geoffrey K., 25–224. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer, and Bauer, Laurie. 2007. Phoneme inventory size and population size. Language 83. 388–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hemming, John. 1978. Red gold: The conquest of the Brazilian Indians. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hermon, Gabriella. 1985. Syntactic modularity. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Hockett, Charles F. 1960. The origin of speech. Scientific American 203. 89–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huang, C.-T. James. 1981. Move wh in a language without wh movement. The Linguistic Review 1. 369–416.Google Scholar
Huang, C.-T. James. 1982. Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Ingram, David. 1978. Typology and universals of personal pronouns. Universals of human language, vol. 3: Word structure, ed. by Greenberg, Joseph H., 213–47. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Johns, Alana. 1992. Deriving ergativity. Linguistic Inquiry 23. 57–88.Google Scholar
Johnson, Kyle. 2003. In search of the English middle field. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, Amherst, ms. Online: http://people.umass.edu/kbj/homepage/Content/middle_field.pdf.Google Scholar
Johnson, Kyle. 2006. Gapping isn't (VP) ellipsis. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, Amherst, ms. Online: http://people.umass.edu/kbj/homepage/Content/GapnotEllipsis.pdf.Google Scholar
Kawasaki, Noriko. 1989. Jibun-tachi and non-coreferential anaphora. Papers on quantification, ed. by Bach, Emmon, Kratzer, Angelika, and Partee, Barbara, 1–31. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Kay, Paul. 2005. Commentary on Everett (2005). Current Anthropology 46. 636–37.Google Scholar
Kay, Paul, Berlin, Brent, Maffi, Luis; and Merrifield, William. n.d. World color survey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1985. Relative clauses. Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 2, ed. by Shopen, Timothy, 141–70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L., and Comrie, Bernard. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8. 63–99.Google Scholar
Kelepir, Meltem. 2001. Topics in Turkish syntax: Clausal structure and scope. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Kinkade, M. Dale. 1978. Alsea pronouns. Paper presented at the 17th Conference on American Indian Languages, American Association of Anthropology, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Koehn, Edward, and Koehn, Sally. 1986. Apalai. Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 1, ed. by Derbyshire, Desmond C. and Pullum, Geoffrey K., 33–127. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Maria. 1993. Nominalizations. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kornfilt, Jaklin. 2001. On the syntax and morphology of clausal complements and adjuncts in the Turkic languages. Aspects of typology and universals, ed. by Bisang, Walter, 63–82. Berlin: Akademie.Google Scholar
Krause, Cornelia. 2000a. Anmerkungen zum pränominalen Genitiv im Deutschen. Von der Philologie zur Grammatiktheorie: Peter Suchsland zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. by Bayer, Josef and Roemer, Christine, 79–96. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Krause, Cornelia. 2000b. On an (in-)visible property of inherent case. North Eastern Linguistic Society 30. 427–42.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin. 1968. Abstract syntax and Latin complementation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1994. Culture, cognition and grammar. Language contact and language conflict, ed. by Pütz, Martin, 25–53. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefebvre, Claire, and Muysken, Pieter. 1987. Mixed categories: Nominalizations in Quechua. (Studies in natural language and linguistic theory.) Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C. 2005. Commentary on Everett (2005). Current Anthropology 46. 637–38.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. 1986. On the plurality of worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Li, Charles N., Thompson, Sandra A.; and Sawyer, Jesse O.. 1977. Subject and word order in Wappo. International Journal of American Linguistics 43. 85–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1985. Connectedness, scope, and c-command. Linguistic Inquiry 16. 163–92.Google Scholar
Loukotka, Čestmir. 1955. Les indiens Botocudo et leur langue. Lingua Posnaniensis 5. 112–35.Google Scholar
Müller, Ana, Storto, Luciana; and Coutinho-Silva, Thiago. 2006a. Number and the mass-count distinction in Karitiana. Proceedings of WSCLA XI: The eleventh Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas, ed. by Armoskaite, Solveiga and Thompson, James J., 122–35.Google Scholar
Müller, Ana, Storto, Luciana; and Coutinho-Silva, Thiago. 2006b. Número e a distinção contável-massivo em Karitiana. Revista da ABRALIN 5. 43–63.Google Scholar
Nakanishi, Kimiko, and Tomioka, Satoshi. 2004. Japanese plurals are exceptional. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 13. 113–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2005. Possible and probable languages: A generative perspective on linguistic typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nimuendajú, Curt. 1948. The Mura and Pirahã. Bulletin 143: Handbook of South American Indians 3, 255–69. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Noonan, Michael. 1985. Complementation. Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 2: Complex constructions, ed. by Shopen, Timothy, 42–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nordlinger, Rachel, and Sadler, Louisa. 2004. Nominal tense in crosslinguistic perspective. Language 80. 776–806.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polinsky, Maria, and Caponigro, Ivano. 2008. Everything is relative: Evidence from Northwest Caucasian. Paper presented at Generative Linguistics in the Old World, Newcastle, UK.Google Scholar
Prideaux, Gary D. 1970. The syntax of Japanese honorifics. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roeper, Thomas, and Snyder, William. 2005. Language learnability and the forms of recursion. UG and external systems: Language, brain and computation (Linguistik aktuell 75), ed. by Maria, Anna Sciullo, Di, 155–69. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Sag, Ivan A., Wasow, Thomas; and Bender, Emily M.. 2003. Syntactic theory: A formal introduction. 2nd edn. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Saito, Mamoru. 1987. Three notes on syntactic movement in Japanese. Issues in Japanese linguistics, ed. by Imai, Takashi and Saito, Mamoru, 301–50. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Sakel, Jeanette, Stapert, Eugenie; and Sauerland, Uli. 2007. Syntactic and semantic embedding. Paper presented at Birdsong, Speech and Language: Converging Mechanisms, Utrecht.Google Scholar
Sheldon, Steven N. 1988. Os sufixos verbais Mura-Pirahã. Série Lingüística 9. 146–75.Google Scholar
Shibatani, Masayoshi. 1990. The languages of Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. 2007. Context and comments on Dan Everett's claims (Letter to the Editor). Human Development (online supplement). Online: www.karger.com/journals/hde/hde_jh.htm.Google Scholar
Smyth, Herbert Weir, and Messing, Gordon M.. 1956. Greek grammar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Snyder, William. 2007. Child language: The parametric approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanley, Jason, and Szabó, Zoltán Gendler. 2000. On quantifier domain restriction. Mind & Language 15. 219–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stassen, Leon. 1985. Comparison and universal grammar: An essay in universal grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Storto, Luciana. 2007. Anáfora ta- em Karitiana: Um argumento de terceira pessoa não especificado para número. Paper presented at V Congresso Internacional da ABRALIN, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.Google Scholar
Stowell, Tim. 1981. Origins of phrase structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From etymology to pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. (Cambridge studies in linguistics.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szendrői, Kriszta. 2003. A stress-based approach to the syntax of Hungarian focus. The Linguistic Review 20. 37–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taraldsen, Knut Tarald. 1979. The theoretical interpretation of a class of marked extractions. Theory of markedness in generative grammar, ed. by Belletti, Adriana, Brandi, Luciano, and Rizzi, Luigi, 475–516. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore.Google Scholar
Thomason, Sarah G., and Everett, Daniel L.. 2001. Pronoun borrowing. Berkeley Linguistics Society 27. 301–15.Google Scholar
Thompson, Sandra A., Park, Joseph Sung-Yul; and Li, Charles N.. 2006. A reference grammar of Wappo. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tonhauser, Judith. 2007. Nominal tense? The meaning of Guaraní nominal temporal markers. Language 83. 831–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tormo, J. G. 1993. Manitana Auqui Besüro: Gramática moderna de la lengua chiquitana y vocabulario básico. Santa Cruz de la Sierra: Los Huérfanos.Google Scholar
van der Voort, Hein. 2004. Review of The Amazonian languages, ed. by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Anthropological Linguistics 46. 210–15.Google Scholar
Vergnaud, Jean Roger. 2006. Letter to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik (1976). Syntax: Critical concepts in linguistics, vol. 5, ed. by Freidin, Robert and Lasnik, Howard, 21–34. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vidal, Alejandrà. 2001. Pilagá grammar (Guaykuruan family, Argentina). Portland: University of Oregon dissertation.Google Scholar
von Fintel, Kai. 1994. Restrictions on quantifier domains. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, Amherst dissertation. Online: http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jA3N2IwN/fintel-1994-thesis.pdf.Google Scholar
Weir, E. M. Helen. 1984. A negação e outros tópicos da gramática Nadëb. Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinas masters thesis.Google Scholar
Wells, Rulon S. 1947. Immediate constituents. Language 23. 81–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1979. Ethno-syntax and the philosophy of grammar. Studies in Language 3. 313–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 2005. Commentary on Everett (2005). Current Anthropology 46.641.Google Scholar
Winter, Werner. 1999. When numeral systems are expanded. Numeral types and changes worldwide, ed. by Gvozdanović, Jadranka, 43–53. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wise, Mary Ruth, and Riggle, Edward. 1979. Terminología matemática y la ensenanza de conocimientos básicos entre los grupos étnicos de la amazonía peruana. Lenguaje y Ciencias, Trujillo-Peru 19. 85–103.Google Scholar
Yang, Charles. 2002. Knowledge and learning in natural language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zwart, C. Jan-Wouter. 1993. Dutch syntax: A minimalist approach. Groningen: University of Groningen dissertation.Google Scholar
Zwart, C. Jan-Wouter. 1997. Morphosyntax of verb movement: A minimalist approach to the syntax of Dutch. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar